"Twilight of The Interest Groups" or Sunrise For a Whole New Set of Payoffs?

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein muses on the difference between health care reform back in 1994, when "industry" was against it all and now, when it's smooth sailing on these fronts:

This year, the Obama administration succeeded at neutralizing every single industry. Pharma supports the bill. Insurers are incoherent on it, but there's not a ferocious and united campaign to kill the proposal. The American Medical Association has endorsed the Senate bill. The hospitals have endorsed the bill. Labor has endorsed the bill. The business community is split, with larger employers holding their fire.

Curiously, Klein sees this as the "twilight of the interest groups" even as he notes that "You can take that as a critique of the bill's deals and concessions."

Let's bet on the latter, especially given that the two biggest groups that might have been against it—big drug companies and insurance companies—either expressly got massive payouts built into the legislation or stand to ginormously increase their customer base via mandates and down-the-road sweeteners that will help the economy stay stuck in a diabetic coma. And unions of course got carve-outs for their particular needs re: "Cadillac" plans (unrelated: When will we all agree that Cadillac signifies nothing so much as a shitty, overpriced ripoff?). If this is being neutralized, then where do I sign up for my freebies?

Or as Glenn Greenwald puts it on his Twitter feed, "Forcing the Government to bribe and accommodate you don't mean you're powerless and in your 'twilight'- it's the opposite."

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Although the Cimarron was a shitty, overpriced ripoff, Cadillacs are good expensive luxury cars. Just because there are better (and even more expensive) ones now doesn’t mean that the Cadillac reference is wrong.

It makes my head hurt that people as partisan and abjectly fucking stupid as Klein are taken even remotely seriously.

It just serves as a reminder that partisans are complete and total fucking scum (hi joe!) with absolutely zero integrity or consistency. I cannot express my overwhelming, bonecrushing contempt for them. It’s almost physically painful, it’s so strong.

Because they are convinced of the rightness of their cause. They will stand up for their beliefs, no matter how incoherent those beliefs are. Therefore, they look strong and decisive, instead of waffling and weak.

I cannot stand this team sports mentality in politics. Sit down with a leftist, and they’ll usually note how untrustworthy they think government in general is. But then in fora like this or when voting, they get all in love with their team colors and forget reason.

Naturally, this criticism is meant to be leveled at partisans of any stripe.

What I don’t get is why the team sports mentality exists. I mean, if you are a Mets fan, and the Mets win (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA), OK, you’re happy they won. Because they’re playing a game, and games have winners and losers. But you support them because of (usually) regional reasons, and that’s it.

But in politics, you are supposedly on one of the teams for ideological reasons. So why do people completely excuse those on their side when they go against these supposed ideals? Do sports fans excuse a team member who is terrible? No.

Really, in my opinion, it’s just about posturing. You join one of the teams to say to the world, “because I am on TEAM X, you now know that I am a certain type of person”. So the ideals of the team don’t matter for shit, just what they supposedly stand for. And the dipshits who join these teams only care that the team brand remains the same to the outside world, and don’t care what actually is done.

A moron like joe wanted you to know that he cared about the little people, because he was a Democrat. And he would fight like a cornered rat any allegation that there was no difference between TEAM RED and TEAM BLUE, because it was critical to him that TEAM BLUE be perceived a certain way.

No doubt, people want to be labeled by mere affiliation. And others want the easy shorthand of being able to identify their teams by certain colors and mascots.

Rather than taking the time to understand that issues and the world itself are complex, let’s just divide everything up into an artificial dichotomy that makes no sense whatsoever. Two parties? How ridiculous is that? Hell, I’m not sure parties make any damned sense from a liberty-preserving perspective at all.

I’m proud not to be a partisan. Like anyone with any depth and intelligence, my views are far too complex to be pigeonholed into some superficial, mendacious platform of slogans. I’m all for forming alliances with fellow travelers, but not permanent ones. You see, you’ve got to earn my trust on each issue, because I think for myself. And I pay attention to what you’ve been doing.

Totally agreed, ProL. It actually astonishes me, to this day, how you could ever actually want to be a partisan, because it make you look so fucking stupid. joe’s a perfect example; he’s no longer here because he can’t not shill for TEAM BLUE, and at this point that’s just retarded.

This provides another occasion for me to wonder how Ezra Klein got his gig in the first place. I mean, I think Obama, Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, and the rest of the rogues gallery are total fucktards who shouldn’t be trusted with running a lemonade stand…but I can see how they got to where they are today — decades of hard work winning over the right people and screwing over everyone else. But Ez doesn’t appear to have done anything to deserve his post but babble on his blog.

The Reason staff has a view of automobiles that ended about 1992. They recently called Audis “underpowered and breakdown prone”. This about a company that makes the Bugati Viron and a station wagon that has 500 hp. Sometimes the Reason staff’s geek really shows.

So, I noticed that the Empty Suit in Chief today claimed that Social Security “lifted millions out of poverty”. Somehow, it seems to me that when you’re trying to get out of poverty, having 15% of your earnings sucked out of you to fund a Ponzi scheme doesn’t really help.

Well, anyone who doesnt believe “payoffs” happen is truly ignorant. I mean think about it. How can anyone vote NO to something that will clearly benefit the sheeple (thats you and me)? I’ll tell you how, because they have been BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! Its the American way!

Warty, aren’t you from some state I’ve never heard of? PA? I admit that my family bought an entire street in Lancaster, PA, but hell, we owned that shit and had lots of guns. But they were all originally from Manhattan, so it makes it ok.

I think once the insurance companies realize that the demand for their services have doubled yet their premiums are lower and they have a cap on how much they can charge they will not be that excited about this reform. Youtube Converter